THE CHIPPEWA

My first canoe camping trip took place on this river many years ago. I learned a lot about what not to do when paddling a rapids-strewn river with camping gear and three people in the canoe. We managed to get wet, lose gear, and generally screw up, but we still had lots of fun on this excellent example of canoeing at its finest.

The "Big Chip" is pretty small and slow where we put in below Lower Clam Lake. Still, the water was high, and we managed to lose a fly rod when it got tangled in some bushes along the bank. At this point there were three of us and our gear in my 17' Grumman aluminum canoe. We spent the first night at a landing on Moose Lake, a large impoundment of the Chip. It was here we consumed a cheesecake of legend. In those days the art of freeze drying had not reached the level we now appreciate. The cheese filling for the cake, when combined with water, formed a mass the consistency of which was only slightly lighter than concrete. We were hungry after a long day's paddle, though, and it did taste pretty good, so the three of us managed to down the whole cheesecake. The next day we were sluggish, to put it mildly.

The river from Moose Lake down to the enormous Chippewa Flowage gets much bigger and has some tricky rapids. In one of these, Mike and I tipped over. (Scooter, Mike's brother, had hitchhiked back to the car and was to meet us at Winter dam, which creates the Chippewa flowage.) Fortunately, we didn't have a canoe full of gear, but Mike lost his favorite pair of shoes. Cold and wet on this overcast day, we stopped at a bar just upstream of the flowage and bought a package of cookies, which we quickly consumed.

We manged to navigate accross the island filled flowage to the dam. The next day we paddled downstream to Ojibwa, where there is a pretty park near the river. The following day Mike and Scooter paddled down to Radisson, where I met them at a dam. There are some easy rapids on these stretches, but no further disasters occurred.

The East Fork of the Chippewa is also navigable, and has some decent rapids. The most interesting aspect of both branches of the Chippewa to me is the color of the water. Iron stains the water to a reddish orange tint that I have never seen in other rivers. Fishing for musky, walleye, smallmouth and pike should be pretty good.